Viceroy New York
Case Study for Hotel & Facilities Management
Viceroy New York provides guests with exceptional
New York City views, distinctive service and superbly
tailored accommodations.
!The hotel, ideally situated in midtown Manhattan, is
owned by iconic luxury hotel brand, Viceroy Hotel
Group—a company renowned for delivering one-of-akind experiences that bring together innovative
design, world-class dining and intuitive service. Open
for less than a year, the hotel has already earned
numerous awards and accolades, naming it “the
perfect luxe hideaway.”
!Whether discerning travelers come to Viceroy New
York for business or pleasure, they expect the best.
Especially when it comes to the guest rooms.
“I can locate an attendant
immediately, which saves the
entire staff a considerable
amount of time. With efficient
communications in place,
we have more time to deliver
excellent customer service,
clean rooms and help guests.”
!
- Chris Lennon,
Assistant Director of Housekeeping
How Voxer Business Helps:
• Efficiency - Finding attendants on Voxer
is quick, now there’s no need to search
for people on foot
!
• Better Collaboration - Communication
helps the staff work together more
effectively
!
• No Missed Information - Recorded
messages ensure that important
communication is never lost and
doesn’t need to be repeated
!
• Dead Zone Coverage - Voxer holds
messages on the device until they can
be sent, meaning WiFi dead zones are
not an issue
!
• Affordable - Viceroy New York uses
iPod Touch devices with Voxer
Business, giving housekeeping staff a
simple, affordable and powerful
communications system
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The hotel employs a team of six housekeeping
managers and more than 40 attendants to ensure
that every one of the hotel’s 240 rooms meets the
highest standard.
!Keeping 240 guest rooms in top shape requires a
well-coordinated housekeeping team and constant
communication. To minimize interruptions to guests
(and the time between check-out and check-in)
attendants need to clean and stock rooms quickly.
!On any given day, each attendant has to clean
approximately 15 rooms, juggle special requests and
customer concerns, and assist other attendants in
cleaning certain rooms.
!In a typical hotel environment, these operations can
add up to a lot of legwork—literally. Managers run up
and down floors to track down attendants, or
attendants answer ringing phones to get information
and instructions from managers. They also go from
room to room looking for staff and getting special
request items. It’s exhausting and it slows down
productivity.
!Peter Chambers, Vice President of Information
Technology at Viceroy New York, decided to change
this. A Voxer user himself, Peter realized that he could
use Voxer Business and the hotel’s state-of-the-art
WiFi infrastructure to improve how the housekeeping
department communicates while increasing
productivity and customer service in the process.
!The Viceroy IT team had initially tried a VoIP solution,
but they found it to be ineffective with dead zones in
the hotel. However, dead zones are not an issue for
Voxer. The service automatically stores messages on
your device when you’re in a dead zone and sends it
when your connection is restored.
!Viceroy New York came up with a simple and
affordable idea: give their staff Voxer Business on
WiFi-connected iPod Touches.
“In other hotels that I’ve
worked in, it used to take me
20 minutes to track down an
attendant with a special
request… With Voxer,
communications with and
between attendants is easy. ”
!
- Chris Lennon,
Assistant Director of Housekeeping
This facilitates easy two-way communication between
managers and attendants, and allows them to utilize
other essential productivity apps such as HotSOS.
!Now, instead of running around 29 floors to track
down an attendant for a special request, the staff can
simply send a “vox”. If a manager wants to check to
make sure a room has been properly serviced,
attendants can send a photo via Voxer Business.
!Voxer Business can also be configured to make sure
that voices don’t blurt out of devices at inappropriate
times, as can happen with walkie-talkies. That means
that Viceroy attendants and managers can
communicate discreetly when guests are nearby. It
also means that managers can stay in the loop at all
times, even during meetings.
!The Viceroy New York team sends approximately
1,400 voxes a week. Unlike two-way radios,
everything is saved as a message, so managers can
revisit conversations to clear up issues involving
customers or staff.
!When customers check into the Viceroy New York,
they are expecting luxury and attentive service at
every turn. With Voxer Business, the housekeeping
team now has the fast, reliable and powerful system it
needs for productivity and constant communication.
Voxer Business is a professional-grade push-to-talk service for companies. Communicate instantly with live and
recorded voice, text and photos on today’s smartphones.
!
Check our website for more information voxer.com or contact our Sales team at sales@voxer.com.
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